How To Activate 3d Touch On Iphone Xs Max

Up your iPhone game: Guide to using 3D touch in the upcoming iOS 12

35% of my Instagram followers do not use the 3D Touch functionality found on all iPhone models since the iPhone 6s. If you are part of the 35%, then this guide is for you. Learn how to use the iPhone like a pro now!

On an iPhone, you activate 3D Touch by pressing down on the screen with force. By doing so, you will open up a third dimension of functionalities (hence '3D'). These functionalities are often perceived as equivalent to the right click on the mouse, but it does more than that.

Over the years, I've found 3D Touch to be an extremely useful feature, and as we look forward to the roll out of iOS 12 on 17 Sep, here are some 3D Touch features that I have personally found to be most useful.

Before w e begin, let's get some basic understanding right. Technically, there are 2 parts to 3D Touch — 'Peek' and 'Pop'. Peek is when you press down and hold onto the screen (without lifting your finger) using moderate force, like doing a half-press on a camera shuttle. This will reveal part of the content and some interaction menu. While Peeking, you subsequently apply additional force onto the screen to Pop the content. Pop is when you reveal the full content that you were Peeking at, which is equivalent to clicking on the content in the first place using the normal Multi-Touch gesture.

Not all interactions have Peek and Pop. Some are just Pop. This confusion is just part of the reasons why the feature did not fly with consumers. With this understanding, we are ready to proceed with the article. From here on, I will use the term '3D Touch' interchangeably as both as a verb and noun.

Clear all notification

3D Touch the "x" button beside the "Notification Centre" text reveals the "Clear All Notifications" option. This is quite self explanatory.

Benefit: Clear the messy notification centre easily.

Convert your keyboard into a track pad

Whenever you see a keyboard, you can 3D Touch and hold down onto any part of the keyboard between the top "qwerty" row and bottom "123 space" row to convert it into a track pad where you can then move left and right, up and down, to dictate the positioning of the cursor in your text. Note that you must hold down your finger even while moving the cursor. The moment you release your finger, the function ends and keyboard reappears.

Benefit: Edit typos easily using the cursor. So much easier than using your fat finger to aim for the exact position of the typo.

Quickly glance through new emails like The Flash

In your notification centre, 3D Touch an email notification from Apple's stock Mail app to reveal the content of the email. Then, swipe up to reveal quick actions, like Delete or Mark as Read.

Benefit: Without opening the Mail app, you can now see the content right from the notification centre and quickly delete marketing emails easily.

No pride in having 9,999+ unread emails

Within the Mail app, you can 3D Touch any email with moderate force (i.e. Peek) and hold on to it to reveal the content of the email. If you press a bit harder (i.e. Pop), you will reveal the full content.

But the highlight is when you swipe up, left and right while you Peek. Depending on your settings, you can swipe left all the way to delete the email, swipe right all the way to mark the email as read, and swipe up and release your finger to reveal a secondary menu that allows you to do some quick actions like reply, forward, and move to another folder (which I have personally found to be most useful).

Benefit: Try it for yourself. After getting used to the gestures, you will find yourself looking through and organizing your emails a lot faster.

While Peeking, swipe left, right and up to reveal more options

Be an Instagram expert

When you see thumbnails on Instagram, you can always Peek at them to reveal the content. When Peeking, continue to hold your finger on the screen and slide up to reveal a hidden menu that allow you to like the photo/video without actually going into the post. But of course, as we all know, the most useful function is "View Profile", because we are all secretly professional IG stalkers.

Benefit: For every post you view and like using 3D Touch, you shave off half a second. When you spend the entire afternoon using Instagram, you actually save a lot of time.

Not about Wang Leehom. But damn he went to Apple Park for the recent Keynote.

Setting up for speed

See the pun? Anyway, when 3D Touch the General app, you reveal a sub-menu that allows you to jump right into some of the more important settings. Continue to hold down your finger and slide up (or down, depending on the position of your app on the screen) to the sub-menu you want to make changes to, and release your finger to jump right into it. Holding down your finger is not mandatory in this instance; you can also release your finger and click on the sub-menu that you are interested in. But by releasing your finger it becomes a two-step process which I think is just a bit slower. So I usually will slide instead.

I find it incredibly useful when I switch my AirPods pairing between different devices (under Bluetooth), or connect to a new Wi-Fi in a new environment.

Benefit: You save 1 step by using 3D Touch. Not a big deal in absolute sense but that's 50% improvement of a 2-step process.

Because we are all narcissistic

There's a really easy way to take selfie or portrait photos on iPhone. 3D Touch the camera icon, hold down your finger, and slide up (or down) to jump straight into the particular camera mode!

Benefit: So important when you're trying to take an awkward selfie with someone/something special. If you miss it, it isn't coming back.

Faster go to bed

I track my sleep using the iPhone. It tells me my sleep quality by relying on the microphone or gyroscope of the device. I use this app called Sleep Cycle. It doubles as a alarm clock as well.

So right before I sleep, I'll turn on the app and set it beside my bed. When I 3D Touch the Sleep Cycle icon, it reveals a sub-menu for me to start the alarm directly (for weekdays), or just track without alarm (for weekends). That's it. No further action required.

Benefit: Some third party apps do build good support for 3D Touch. In this case, Sleep Cycle basically reduced all the steps into one simple 'click' using 3D Touch, saving users a lot of steps.

The notifications ain't hiding from anyone

When you have many apps, you will naturally put them into folders. When multiple apps within a single folder have notifications, you can 3D Touch the folder icon to reveal the notification breakdown by apps. Sliding up/down or clicking onto the app listed will bring you to the app itself.

Benefit: Tremendously powerful and convenient feature especially if you have tons of folders like I do (I have 16 folders).

Don't skip a beat

If you are one of the growing number of hipsters using Apple Music, then the 3D Touch functionality is like godsent! 3D Touch any song to quickly add to playlist, view album, like it, or even insert to play next!

Benefit: These 'hidden keys' are almost an essential part of the Apple Music experience.

Edit photos easily

If you regularly edit photos, then you are likely using Snapseed. It is one of the best free apps to edit photos given its wide range of tools. To edit a photo, you will first need to import it into Snapseed — a 5-step process. Applying 3D Touch on the Snapseed app icon pulls out a sub-menu that lets you slide up/down to the "Open from device", and you can select your album and choose the photo — 3 steps in total. Very very convenient.

Benefit: If you edit every Instagram photo, then this will save you so much time

The fastest way to search

Share with you an insider trick: Search anything on the web using 3D Touch on Google's Google app (not a typo) is by far the fastest way to search. 3D Touch the app, then slide up or down to "Quick Search". What it does it that it will launch into the search bar with the keyboard up and ready for you to type. Usually, you will have to click on the search bar to pull out the keyboard, but not with this 3D Touch function. It didn't worked consistently in the past, but over the last few months it has worked 100% of the time for me. Not sure if it was an update on the app or iOS 12's bug fix.

Benefit: You have to try it for yourself to feel the convenience.

Be a local king

Google Maps app contains a very nice 3D Touch trick I bet most people don't know. When you see a place of interest on the map, simply 3D Touch the location icon to Pop up the quick details like opening hours, and even tap to make a phone call. Why don't you just tap normally, you ask? Because if you do, you'll need to deal with the cumbersome interface such as swiping up to reveal more, press the top back button to return to maps, and click on the x on the search bar to remove listing. So troublesome. To cancel the 3D Touch quick review, simply click on anywhere around the grey out area, and it brings you straight back into the maps view.

Benefit: You may find it super useful if you rely heavily on maps when traveling.

Whassup/whatsapp

Do you know that for most messaging apps, you can reply your messages directly from the lock screen or notification centre itself? Simply 3D Touch the message to reply. It works for Facebook Messenger app, iMessage, Whatsapp, Telegram and more. It's a one-step process!

Benefit: Without the need to launch the app to reply, you save lots of time! I really don't see why anyone wouldn't want to use this.

Get ready for the X game

As many of you folks get yourself ready for the iPhone Xs/Xs Max (sorry Xr, you don't have 3D Touch), and other relatively clueless iPhone X users, you will want to know this: There are 2 buttons at the lock screen and when you first pull down the notification centre — for flashlight and camera.

They are not the usual Multi-Touch buttons that you can just tap to activate. They are specifically created to be 3D Touch buttons. That means you MUST use force to activate. I speculate the reason is that you won't accidentally fat finger and launch the flashlight when your intention was to launch the notification displayed beneath it.

Benefit: In this case, 3D Touch is a requirement.

When you 3D Touch the buttons, they will turn from grey to black and be enlarged.

Wonder whether the weather is getting wetter

Sometimes when you 3D Touch app icons, it doesn't only always show a sub-menu. Sometimes they can display dynamic information on a widget. In this case, 3D Touching the Yahoo! weather app will Pop up a widget showing the current weather condition.

Benefit: You could always ask Siri for help, but if you are shy, this is an easy way to check the weather without launching the app.

Camera's rollin'

In Apple's stock Photos album, you can Peek on any photo to view the content while holding your finger down. If you want to see the full photo, apply more force to Pop it.

Benefit: If you want to quickly show some key photos of your recent trip to your friends, but the photos are dispersed across your camera roll, you shouldn't slide through multiple similar photos one by one. This is a quicker way to show the different photos without having to open the photo itself. Once you release your finger, you're back to the album (as opposed to opening up the photo and click on the back button to return).

That's it! All the examples above are the ones I actually use frequently. There are way more applications of 3D Touch but I'll leave you to explore the rest.

I honestly find 3D Touch super useful and while it is regrettable that Apple has done a really poor job marketing this feature, I hope all of you will start using it after reading this article. L

Yours truly,
Your Apple guru next door